Let's Break Laws of Nature
by expletive deleted
Summary: Tavros Nitram is one of the greatest card players in the West - though it is hard to get people to believe that. But no one and nothing warned him about the woman he's playing against now, and he'll have to play a different game entirely to have any chance of winning...


Prompt: Tavros/Vriska (redrom), Western/magic realism.

The prompt is from the challenge post for genre-mixing fanworks at the Homestuck Shipping Olympics, which can be found at the community "hs-olympics" on Dreamwidth.

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It's not like flowers die where she walks. No, that would be telling.

The world can be full of messages for anyone paying attention, but around the middle of the game, you could curse everything around for not giving some warning about this woman. No crackling sparks and choking smoke in her mass of red hair, and no snakes set to rattling when she laughs. You should have stuck to helping Aradia out around the saloon; you never should have asked to be dealt in; you should have known to take this woman's measure more closely. But the light shining through the doors and windows didn't dim when she walked in, and on the bar countertop the morning's wildflower bouquet keeps up its fight against the heat of the day.

There is no way to read this woman, and it's _because_ she shows her hand in damn near every way imaginable. The other players, you included, started off complacent and indulgent about her presence, but the problem is that it doesn't matter at all what she's dealt or what she plays; she stays as wild and expressive as someone who's never so much as heard of a rule. It's impossible to get a read on her.

The table is gathering a crowd, though it's hardly past noon and most everybody who isn't a drifter like you should be neck-deep in work. There are even kids and Aradia's normally stern about keeping them out. This gambler lady makes for good entertainment while just sitting down. She's all grins and jibes, plays with the tilt of her cowboy hat and theatrically shakes out her sleeves to show them empty, she spins her pistols and nearly upends her glass vertically when she drinks. Oh, sometimes she curses and tenses, like she might just be stuck ... but what if she's putting it on? What if she has yet another _perfect_ hand? But what if this time it's real?

You start to play seriously. You also have a smile that can't be shifted, but you've been travelling this district for years and there are folks watching who know you well enough to point out the new smoothness in your motions. That tell has cost you games over the years. It hides that your heart's working like a piston, though, and you can't fault yourself much.

The woman doesn't react to the talk. It wouldn't be possible for her to show _more_ confidence. Her mouth looks as viciously victorious as it has all along, her easy drawling stays unshaken, she still twirls her pearl-handled pistols every now and again. At least the bigger guns stay put under her men's jacket.

Everyone playing started cheating long ago but you can't get a handle on all her tricks. From the way she eyes you, it's probably the same for her. You wish she'd flash blue streaks of lightning from her eyes and have done with it.

Aradia makes encouraging gestures when she passes with orders, peering over shoulders to follow the state of the game ... which, soon enough, she's doing with a sharper kind of interest as she takes coins and crumpled bills to stuff into her pockets. She hands people their drinks and food and takes two lots of money - one for payment, and...

The crowd is starting to bet on who's going to win.

You're the fastest draw in the West. People laugh when they hear that, because you have a boy's face and hardly look like you've seen a gun up close, but they only keep laughing when they don't have to play cards against you. You eye the woman.

"I didn't catch your name, ma'am," you say, and the noise in the room hushes. The crowd knows who the real players are. They're watching the two of you. And they _still_ don't see when you hide a card up _her_ sleeve.

"Serket! The name's Serket! What the hell are you pulling? Focus, damn you!" she yells, and ups the bet she'd laid on the table with a frantic shove at her chips.

You knew she'd be able to follow it.

"I still put my money on Tavros," Aradia says as the onlookers go back to full volume. Serket turns around to gape at her - goes back to the game - and then turns again to Aradia. "As if!" She huffs and fluffs, and after another turn shoots a couple of cards of her own up your sleeves. From then on the cards fly between you, and you figure out what's left of the hand for the other players. Both of you close in on them, eyeing the bets racking up - and you keep an eye on each other.

You're too cool to have much in the way of tells - which is something that _really_ makes people laugh. (Especially when they're called David Strider, but he is supposed to be too cool to get to laugh, so there.) You're a grounded soul in a way that most people have difficulty understanding, and you'll smile no matter the hand you're dealt. What does Serket find when she turns her attention to you? No new warmth in the atmosphere, no dogs around to start tell-tale slinking closer or away, the music no clearer or more colourful or rhythmic.

All the players agree that this will be the final round, and at last the two of you conclude the game with cards spread in a fan on the table before you. It is probably a sound move to keep looking at each other instead of the cards - it distracts the watchers from thinking you two might have thrown the game - so it's just as well that you find it difficult to look away from Serket. You don't know which of you won. She probably doesn't know either.

Her sneer is, basically, terrifying. You tip your hat, she sneers worse and puts her boots up on the table - weathered and knocked about - and you immediately stand and gesture to Aradia. "A drink for Miss Serket, on me." Oh, Lord, it was 'Miss', wasn't it? _Would_ she be married? You get whistles and backslaps on your way to the bar.

"Aradia," you whisper to your old friend. "Hey, about, uh, the bets you collected..."

"Of course you're getting a cut! As soon as I'm done," she says in an undertone, nodding you towards the counter at the back, and you turn and give Serket a nod too.

She's already on her way over. The light feeling in your feet and the dread tightening your stomach is all just you; the world has nothing in particular to say about it. For all that scowling and the men's clothes, Serket's not ugly.

Splitting the money in front of all these people would be asking for a fight. Aradia makes a show of talking to you and Serket, swirling about with the drinks twice as much as necessary to hide that she's giving you a gander at what's going in the cashbox. She does most of the talking too, which you have to listen to carefully to realise it's a negotiation for how the money's getting split. She ends up with eighteen per cent of her own - Serket raises it from fifteen from the goodness of her heart, she insists, too loudly - and then Aradia gives an outrageous wink at finding out how you two had played everybody else.

"As for our share, Serket - a fifty-fifty split, I think, sounds good," you say. Eighty-twenty, Serket doesn't say, and you're surprised by that. Your smile to her goes a little shame-faced. You two shake hands on the deal - she screws out an answering smile and you wait, for some stupid reason, for a crack in her face - and slug back your drinks.

Then you put down the glass, pop off the barstool, and run out of the saloon like a scared jackrabbit.

Serket screeches in outrage. Where anyone else might be embarrassed, she comes after you.

You make it through the people, outside and around the building to the post where your horse is tied. She'll probably have no compunction about hollering her grievances in the noonday of the high street, but as long as you get on your horse—v

Serket strikes a shoulder like a rifle butt into the small of your back, and you splash and thump into the horses' water trough. With a painful twist you scramble around to see her next move.

There are the sparks. Finally, like it felt all along, there's fire framing her sneer, licking at the air from the tips of her flyaway hair.

"_No_body cheats me!" Serket announces. "You really want to be nobody so bad?" She looks angry - and impressed - but like she's determined about staying angry, and her hand is on one of her big guns.

The thing is, you're in water.

"At least, uh ... it's more like, I made _you_ cheat you?" You hold up a placatory hand that she glares at it like she'll bite it ... which means that she doesn't notice your leg coming to hook on hers and yank her off balance. Right into the trough with you, and you dip to the bottom so there's space to get her gun and her head in the water.

She pushes up spluttering, ridiculous and teeth bared - and the water begins to heat up. Steam rises like smoke: the fire keeps burning.

The lady does not stop. She probably doesn't ever stop or even think that she'd need to, you could easily believe, and you gape in horror and admiration.

Serket shoves out of the trough. "What? It happens!" Her colour goes high under her freckled, brown-burnt skin as she takes in your expression. "Damnation!"

You hold up both hands in sincere appeasement. "Hey, uh, I think we could just talk about this. I only played, in the particular way that I played, because I knew we'd get more money out of it. You clearly could match that kind of game, it was easy to tell, so I thought that..."

"Thought you'd make a fool of me?" The sneer doesn't work as well now, even with the steam. "Or..."

You wait - and you get what maybe you were waiting for. Her smile feels like a new performance, for all that it has the same swagger to it.

"A partner?" Serket says.

"I, uh ... ride alone?"

She smirks. Everything about her says that she's back in _some_ game, whatever game that might be. "You sure about that, or is it a passing thought you maybe had when you woke up this morning?"

"I, uh. I ride alone. Although, you know, ma'am, you play a mighty good game, and. If we had to play again, fair and square..." You grin enticingly.

"Then you'd go down faster than—!" She stops mid-snarl. One hand smacks into her other palm and then and then Serket makes her smile brilliant again. "Faster than I can dance," she says. "I _love_ to dance. Think you could match me on that?"

You look at her. You look around the horse yard and high street.

"Don't be smart!" Serket snaps. "No, not now."

"This is, uh, one of very few places where they'll let a white lady dance with me..."

Serket laughs. "The only trouble we'd have is if we're looking for a place where I'll get called a 'lady'!" She's lit up. She's hopeful. She hasn't killed you yet. "But I got somewhere in mind. I have a friend who owns a place open to any kind of dancing, just about. He plays a mean piano. The food's not bad."

You make a helpless gesture with spread hands. "I thought that, maybe, you just wanted to get even with me."

"Maybe I really thought that too, to start with. But I guess today's your day for being persuasive, huh?" The compliment sounds, somehow, like a challenge.

People don't believe it when you say that you like challenges. At the moment it seems as if you like them even when you don't know what on Earth the challenge is for.

"Tell me your name. Let's introduce ourselves properly, _lady_ and gentleman." Serket holds out a hand to help you up. You are soaked, on your back, with the horses are looking askance at you: and the lady still wants to dance.

You put your hand in hers and say, "The Toreador."

Her grip firms slow and sure and too tightly, and her eyes narrow. "Really? Well, then. Consider this your lucky day. You have just met Scorpion-Sting Serket." She hauls you up.

"Oh, that's a good one," you say, grabbing your hat from the water trough, and then you realise. "_Oh!_ The Scorpion, oh, wow!"

She does like that you've heard of her - the grin is back for a second before she speaks. "Yeah, well, you think you're surprised? _I_ thought, having done some asking around and investigating, that I was looking for a game with a real player, a man come over the border from way down south ... a guy named Tavros Nitram."

Your face heats. "That, ah. Well, that doesn't sound as impressive. You get it, I think, what with having a great name like that too."

Flattery tells as easily on her as everything else, but she tries hard and makes a sour expression. "People, so I have been told and _told_, are not a game you can win at. I'm thinking it's best to make a deal here, where you and me, we go by the much less loaded names of Nitram and Miss Vriska Serket."

"Well, if there's playing involved ... maybe it turns out best to win alongside people rather than against them, right? Vriska," you add, in a way that's probably embarrassing.

"Don't think you're going to get away with that kind of play all the time!" Her smile makes it feel like the two of you might end up neck-deep in sunflowers if this goes on. "Con_vince_ me first."

You take a step away to give a slight bow, taking her hand as politely as possible - she moves it willingly into the gesture - to brush lips over the back of it. You've always wanted to do that. While you're bent, you pick a flower from beside your boot to offer to her. It's no sunflower, just a small bloom of a deeper blue than her eyes, just as pretty.

"Holy shit!" says Serket. Says Vriska, eyes wide. "Flowers grow where you walk?"

"It has been, at times, known to happen." You hastily wipe mud off the stem and offer it again. "I think having a liking for gentle things, and nature, and ah, friendliness and so forth ... doesn't mean that I can't have, what most people would call, you know. _Fun_."

Which you didn't mean the way it sounded. Not exactly, or precisely, or at least not mostly - and the eyebrow-waggle was definitely a mistake. But this lady really is no lady, and Vriska overcomes her gaping shock to grab you round the shoulders, hearty as a man with the first fistful of money for the month, and drags you back to the saloon. You'd have thought that you should split up until you go dancing; leave them wanting more, Strider always says at great length.

There's nothing here telling you to stay - flowers turn to the sun, not to a fire - but though you still almost think there should be, there's nothing to say you should go. The two of you will have to make something out of this match all of your own.


End file.
